Blanche Fury

April 12, 2016

Over the years, the term Pre-Raphaelite somehow took on a life of its own and no longer refers to just art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but a bohemian style of dress or a certain physical type. Usually, when I see a modern woman described as Pre-Raphaelite, it refers to her wild and flowing hair.

Is it any wonder that ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ is used to describe luxurious tresses when masterpieces like this exist?

A few weeks ago I watched the movie Blanche Fury (1948) and Pre-Raphaelite was the word that leapt to mind the moment I saw the main character’s hair – not because it was the abundant mass of curls we usually think of, but because of her pinned coiffure. Actress Valerie Hobson played the title role and the moment she stepped on screen, I was struck by her resemblance to certain images of Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Elizabeth Siddal.

Blanche Fury

Siddal’s hair was described by Georgiana Burne-Jones as “very loosely fastened up, so that it fell in soft, heavy wings.” Blanche Fury’s hair seems to fall in similar wings, although not as loosely pinned (at times in the film, she incorporates braids). Her high-collared gowns are also similar to those seen on images of Siddal.

Self portrait of Elizabeth Siddal

In Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s portrait of Siddal below, we can see her hair tucked under loosely.

Blanche Fury screen shot on the left, detail of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s drawing of Elizabeth Siddal on the right.Sketch of Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti on the left, Valerie Hobson as Blanche Fury on the right.

The film has been described as a melodramatic gothic, but it doesn’t quite live up to that description for me. It starts off strong, but falls flat quickly. Producer Anthony Havelock Allen later said “We took far too long over Blanche Fury, it cost too much money and it didn’t ‘work’ and never attracted any great audience. David and Ronnie didn’t like what I was trying to do with Blanche Fury, which was along the lines of the very successful costume films from Gainsborough. I wanted to make a serious one with a better story and I thought it would make a lot of money. I found out what I was making was a ‘hard’ film, not a ‘soft’ film which the others were. There was a real hatred in it as well as love, and the public didn’t want it. Cineguild more or less broke up over that.”

At the time, actress Valerie Hobson was married to the producer Anthony Havelock-Allen (she later married scandal ridden MP John Profumo). She said about the film “I had just had our son, who was born mentally handicapped, and he (Havelock Allen) meant the film as a sort of ‘loving gift’, making me back into a leading lady, which was a wonderful idea. The film didn’t work completely.”

I feel that the plot of Blanche Fury works, though, and as much as I repeatedly say I loathe Hollywood’s penchant for remakes, I think a retelling of this movie would have potential.

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2 Comments

woofwoof

There is a definite resemblance to Lizzie Siddal. The film itself sounds like the sort of film I used to watch as a child on TV to pass rainy Saturday afternoons! The plot is quite interesting but I expect the main flaw was casting Stewart Granger – there were a whole lot of Victorian type films (often remakes eg The hound of the Baskervilles, The Barrett s of Wimpole Street) none of which were as good as the original. In most cases these were filmed in Hollywood on a picture postcard England set, and Granger usually comes over as a cowboy in a Victorian suit!

Stephanie Graham Piña is an independent scholar whose research focuses on Victorian Art, especially the Pre-Raphaelites. In 2004 she created LizzieSiddal.com, a resource for those interested in the life of Pre-Raphaelite model and painter Elizabeth Siddal. She established her website ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood’ in 2007 to highlight the work of women artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Circle. Through her popular online publications, she has been a leading advocate of independent research and discourse on Victorian art.